Drugs And Crime

This is the scene twelve hours after gunmen opened fire on a car, killing three and wounding a fourth, and helping to make November the deadliest month of the year: two bullet casings embedded in the mud, shattered glass in an empty parking space on Oakford Avenue, four pairs of shoes, their laces tied, dangling from an overhead power line. Thirty-one slayings in 30 days. Baltimore's worst November in nine years. If these numbers mean anything, the city's 216 killings this year are still well below the 265 we had at this time in 2007.

This is the scene twelve hours after gunmen opened fire on a car, killing three and wounding a fourth, and helping to make November the deadliest month of the year: two bullet casings embedded in the mud, shattered glass in an empty parking space on Oakford Avenue, four pairs of shoes, their laces tied, dangling from an overhead power line. Thirty-one slayings in 30 days. Baltimore's worst November in nine years. If these numbers mean anything, the city's 216 killings this year are still well below the 265 we had at this time in 2007.

Dozens of city workers swept through Mill Hill yesterday, clearing 25 tons of trash, slashing 16,000 feet of overgrown weeds and removing hundreds of feet of graffiti in an attempt to turn the tide in the Southwest Baltimore community's war on drugs and crime.The workers targeted a 13-square-block community sandwiched between Gwynns Falls Park and Washington Village to clear storm drains, bait for rats and board vacant homes that had become havens for drug users.Southwest District police officers aggressively patrolled the neighborhood of 750 homes in a search for prostitutes and drug dealers.

What was once monochrome now comes in Kodachrome. But first, some background: Mayor Martin O'Malley introduced his "Believe" campaign in spring 2002 to combat the scourges of drugs and crime in the city. At the time, no one thought to believe in the Orioles. The team was en route to a dismal 67-95 season and seemed beyond hope. But drugs and crime -- now that's something we can overcome! The campaign's stark black-and-white signs blanketed the city, turning up on buildings and car bumpers, on buttons, T-shirts and billboards.

Flanked by federal, state and city officials, as well as civic and religious leaders, Mayor Martin O'Malley officially launched a $2 million media campaign yesterday to urge people to fight harder against drugs and crime, saying it was a "call to action." "We cannot give up on one of our neighbors," O'Malley said. "We have to try harder. ... The time has come to turn the corner." The campaign - dubbed "Baltimore Believe" - begins Monday with a four-minute movie that will be played on the city's television stations.

Something old and something new characterize the concerns residents have about national issues, as measured by an annual survey of constituents by U.S. Representative Beverly B. Byron, D-6th.The federalbudget deficit again topped the list of concerns on constituents' minds, said Beau Wright, a Byron spokesman.The survey also generates comments on more recent issues, and with the rise of the savings and loan debacle during the past year, residents conveyed reluctance about allowing banks to enter the securities and insurance businesses.

SIX YEARS after he launched a 22-church effort to take back troubled corners, the Rev. Willie E. Ray is trying to revive the idea. He wants inner-city churches to confront drug dealers, hold nighttime prayer sessions at corners and renovate vacant buildings into safe houses for kids. "We want this to be a movement," said the activist, who has organized countless anti-violence demonstrations over the past three decades, including several hand-holding vigils. Mr. Ray is on the right track.

IT IS FASHIONABLE these days to talk of ideological truths and fiscal realities, and to dismiss as a sham the 1960s' War on Poverty. Edward Koch, then mayor of New York, voiced the sentiments of many Americans when he told a 1989 European and North American Conference on Urban Safety and Crime Prevention that deprivation, poverty, drugs and crime were unrelated. Tough law and order, more prisons and enhanced border drug interdiction were the ticket.That's easy to say, but it has proved impossible to make that strategy work.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Mohammad Ashrafy waited for the death of the family figurehead, a respected mullah, before he finally planted opium poppies this year for the first time. And sometimes, when he gazed out over the huge stretch of poppies he grew in the Ghor province of central Afghanistan this spring and summer, he felt guilty, recalling the admonishments of his late uncle, Mullah Mortaza Kahn. "We know growing opium is against Islam, but we have to do it," said Ashrafy, 38. "I was the only person left here not growing it, and there was no mullah telling me to stop."

The caskets were empty.Ministers prayed and mourners sang as about 40 people circled the coffins yesterday on the parking lot of a defunct pizza parlor in Northeast Baltimore.They were remembering friends and relatives whom they had buried, loved ones lost to crime and drugs, and they revisited their grief yesterday in the hope that other young people might be spared."Maybe [this] will put some sense through people's heads. Maybe they'll think twice before picking up guns and drugs," said William Towles, a passerby.

In a small cubicle in a computer lab on the top floor of the Stanton Community Center in Annapolis, Vern Wallace sits at a desk with a microphone, a set of headphones and two five-disc CD players to broadcast a live radio show three times a week. The community station on which he broadcasts - Radio Clay Street 1600 AM - has only a quarter-mile range and uses 0.1 watts. But the station's operators see it as an opportunity to deliver a motivational message to the troubled Clay Street neighborhood of Annapolis and encourage residents to stay away from drugs and gangs.

In a small cubicle in a computer lab on the top floor of the Stanton Community Center in Annapolis, Vern Wallace sits at a desk with a microphone, a set of headphones and two five-disc CD players to broadcast a live radio show three times a week. The community station on which he broadcasts - Radio Clay Street 1600 AM - has only a quarter-mile range and uses 0.1 watts. But the station's operators see it as an opportunity to deliver a motivational message to the troubled Clay Street neighborhood of Annapolis and encourage residents to stay away from drugs and gangs.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Mohammad Ashrafy waited for the death of the family figurehead, a respected mullah, before he finally planted opium poppies this year for the first time. And sometimes, when he gazed out over the huge stretch of poppies he grew in the Ghor province of central Afghanistan this spring and summer, he felt guilty, recalling the admonishments of his late uncle, Mullah Mortaza Kahn. "We know growing opium is against Islam, but we have to do it," said Ashrafy, 38. "I was the only person left here not growing it, and there was no mullah telling me to stop."

SIX YEARS after he launched a 22-church effort to take back troubled corners, the Rev. Willie E. Ray is trying to revive the idea. He wants inner-city churches to confront drug dealers, hold nighttime prayer sessions at corners and renovate vacant buildings into safe houses for kids. "We want this to be a movement," said the activist, who has organized countless anti-violence demonstrations over the past three decades, including several hand-holding vigils. Mr. Ray is on the right track.

Flanked by federal, state and city officials, as well as civic and religious leaders, Mayor Martin O'Malley officially launched a $2 million media campaign yesterday to urge people to fight harder against drugs and crime, saying it was a "call to action." "We cannot give up on one of our neighbors," O'Malley said. "We have to try harder. ... The time has come to turn the corner." The campaign - dubbed "Baltimore Believe" - begins Monday with a four-minute movie that will be played on the city's television stations.

Don't abandon parole reform The Sun's editorials on Maryland's Break the Cycle program may lead readers to the unfortunate conclusion that the state's efforts are a failure ("Crime and no punishment," Nov. 19 and "Lieutenant governor hijacks probation," Nov. 20). On the contrary, Break the Cycle is a first step to Maryland's leading the nation out of the costly morass of drugs and crime. Like every state, Maryland has a considerable drug abuse problem among its criminal population. Entrenched drug problems among criminals are not easily resolved.

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke tried to keep his rival Mary Pat Clarke on the defensive over a 1993 proposal to tax drug profits yesterday, but he had to back down on a police statistic as they sparred anew about drugs and crime in Baltimore.Mrs. Clarke, under scathing attack by the mayor for a bill to tax the income of drug dealers, fought back and forced the mayor to retreat from an earlier criticism that she had approved numerous police cuts during her council tenure.Charging that the mayor was distorting her record on crime in a "smear campaign," the City Council president produced a detailed accounting of her votes on city budgets that led him to acknowledge using an incorrect number in a televised mayoral debate last week.

IN A SERIES of news stories about teen-age criminals sentenced to a crucible boot camp, Sun reporter Todd Richissin found that the boys were not only pummeled and pounded while in custody, but they also returned to drugs and crime almost as soon as they were released.The boys, ages 14 to 17, arrived at the Savage Leadership Challenge camp in Garrett County in handcuffs and shackles and were dragged off the bus, slammed, pounded and thrown to the ground in a smorgasbord of physical abuse that was described by Richissin and documented by Sun photographer Andre Chung.

Under sunshine, blue skies and the shadows cast by City Hall, City Councilman Martin O'Malley was sworn in yesterday as Baltimore's 47th mayor, pledging to make neighborhoods such as Cherry Hill, East Baltimore and Penn North as safe as the more upscale enclaves of Guilford, Roland Park and Homeland.With his wife and three small children by his side, the 36-year-old lawyer completed the oath of office delivered by city Clerk of Courts Frank M. Conaway at 12: 42 p.m. He then stepped to the microphone to ask thousands of residents gathered around War Memorial Plaza to help restore a city shattered by poverty, drugs and violence.